The Samurai Inheritance (7 page)

As he scanned the contents, he realised it was a list of annual audits mentioning the objects sold by Adolfus Ribbe to the Neues Museum in 1885. Each was identified by a catalogue number and marked with a (d) for display, (s) for storage or (l), which meant out on loan. His eyes automatically went to the year 1946 and disappointment hit him like a sucker punch when he saw that though the four skulls were listed, the shrunken head had disappeared along with the fish spears, the bowls and the model canoe.

‘It looks as if it went up in smoke at the end of the war.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, it seems I’ve been wasting your time.’

‘You were seeking something specific?’ Did her eyes betray something more than casual interest?

‘My client is keen to see the shrunken head repatriated if it still exists, but …’ He tailed off with a shrug. ‘I have a photograph if that helps?’ From his inside pocket he produced a brown envelope with the picture Keith Devlin had supplied him.

She took it and removed the picture. ‘Yes,’ she squinted as if she was trying to extract every pixel of information from the sepia print, ‘I recognize the technique and the style. Typical of similar artefacts from the island from around the mid-nineteenth century. The skull has been removed and the features preserved and padded out with organic material.’

She handed back the print and looked over the printout again, lips pursed in concentration. Eventually, she gave a nod of understanding. ‘Yes, it disappears, but I think you’ve reached the wrong conclusion. See …’ She twisted so he could read the sheet and drew her finger across a series of dates. ‘The head was never in the museum during the war. The last time it appears is in November nineteen thirty-six, but by the time of the next audit,’ she gave a shrug, ‘it’s gone.’

Jamie’s heart took a lurch and he studied his own sheet more closely. ‘So it could have disappeared any time over the next year?’

‘No.’ Magda shook her head. ‘Two or three months. The next audit is in January of the following year.’

‘Isn’t that unusual? After all, an audit of a museum is a massive undertaking.’

She gave him a look that hinted he was straying into dangerous territory. ‘Not so unusual if you consider the times, Mr Saintclair.’

‘You mean the Nazis, of course.’

She nodded. ‘Obviously those were difficult days for everyone in Berlin.’

It took him a moment to work out the real message in the carefully chosen words. ‘So basically anything with a taint of Jewishness had to be disposed of or destroyed.’

‘That’s correct, or …’ For the first time Magda Ross looked less than confident and Jamie raised an eyebrow, half certain what was coming. ‘… or certain artefacts might have been of interest to, er, certain members of the regime.’

‘Items linked with the occult, you mean,’ he persisted.

‘Yes,’ she said carefully. ‘So you understand the significance of what I am saying?’

‘That if the Reichsführer-SS, Heinrich Himmler, believed the shrunken head of a South Sea savage and probable cannibal could aid his search for the homeland of the Vril, he wouldn’t have hesitated to have it, shall we say, borrowed for his collection.’

Now it was her turn to raise a perfectly curved eyebrow. ‘You’re very well informed, Mr Saintclair.’

The statement contained an unspoken question, but one that would take much too long to answer. ‘Is there any way of finding out where it went?’

She went back to her computer, frowning as she typed. She shook her head. ‘There is no record of its disposal. I’m sorry; it is as if it just vanished.’

Jamie hid his disappointment. He stood up and handed over a dog-eared business card – he really must get some new ones now that he was in funds. ‘If you do happen to come across any more information, please give me a call.’

‘Goodbye, Mr Saintclair.’ Magda accepted the card and they shook hands again. ‘I’m genuinely sorry I wasn’t able to help you.’

As Jamie made his way to the lift, the scent of Magda Ross’s perfume in his nostrils, he released a long breath. Very occasionally in life your path crossed with someone who could have a fundamental effect on your future. Unfortunately, it was usually the wrong time and the wrong person. He tried to focus on Fiona’s face and be thankful he’d just dodged a bullet.

Magda Ross watched from the office window as her visitor walked towards a black Mercedes limousine that stood idling by the museum’s main gate. When it drove off she lifted the phone and dialled the international number that had been in her head since Jamie Saintclair announced the real target of his search.

An hour later, Jamie attempted to shrug off the melancholy the museum visit had inspired by spending the rest of the afternoon browsing art galleries and dealerships along Auguststrasse. Partly, it was disappointment that he’d reached a dead end in the search for the Bougainville head so quickly, but it went deeper than that. For some indefinable reason that had its roots with Adam and Eve, Magda Ross exerted a kind of magnetic influence on him. The thought of calling Fiona temporarily raised his spirits, but he worked out that if it was early evening in Berlin it must be the middle of the night in Sydney.

As dusk approached he wandered back to the hotel by a circuitous route. When he entered the lobby it was filled with after-work drinkers and people gawping at the giant fish bowl. He decided against eating in the restaurant and went straight to his suite. Inside, he shut the curtains in the lounge and went to do the same in the bedroom – and froze. It wasn’t anything he could see, not yet, but an indefinable something had changed. The maids had cleaned the room while he was having breakfast, so it should have been exactly as he’d left it, but …

Since embarking on his alternative career in art recovery he’d developed certain habits designed to give him peace of mind in a new world littered with moral contradictions and shadowy, sometimes dangerous characters. Not security, as such. Nothing could stop someone putting a bullet in your head, or even a knife in your back if they were determined enough. Not security, but something to give him an edge. It wasn’t the kind of thing he’d mention even to his best friend, because it made him look paranoid, but it had worked in the past and it worked now. For instance: the shoes he’d left that looked as if they’d been carelessly abandoned had been at an exact angle to each other, and placed just so to triangulate with the power point. Now they didn’t. The book on the bedside table with the business card marking the page and the pen perfectly touching the edge of the cover. The pen was still in place, but whoever had moved the book had been so absorbed in getting the pen right, that he’d been careless with the business card.

Someone had searched his room.

VIII

Bougainville 1943

Kristian Anugu sat in the depths of the
bikbus
listening to the sound of his pursuers crashing through the undergrowth like water buffalo. A tall, spare man with arm muscles like tree roots and handsome, almost Aryan, features, his hair flared in a wiry, untamed bush and his skin appeared so black it could almost be called purple. He carried a long spear in his right hand and the
yelopela
treasure under his left arm. He knew it must be treasure because the white soldiers who unwittingly supplied him with his belt and loincloth carried similar
kes
and they protected them with unusual vigilance for men usually so careless. His theory had been confirmed one day when he’d watched them worshipping the contents of the
kes
as they talked to God on the
dit-da
machine that travelled everywhere with them.

Curiosity had drawn him to the crashed flying machine and the
yelopela
king who looked as if he was asleep. There’d been many things from the machine he’d have liked and had it not been for his natural wariness he would have taken them. Property ownership was not a concept familiar to Kristian Anugu, a warrior of the
Koki
, a sub-clan of the Naasioi people who populated Papa’ala, in the southern centre of the island. He was the son of Osikaiang, the queen, who owned the land, the sky and the sea. Osikaiang owned, and Kristian Anugu fought to keep. That was the way it was and the way it had always been. If a man could not protect what he had and a stronger or more cunning man managed to take it away, then he deserved nothing. He’d first been attracted to the
yelopela
king’s long knife with its glittering handle and silken braid. Yet even as he reached for it something made him pause. The way the dead man’s hand still gripped it confirmed his instinct that the king’s spirit was still strong and one of the
ensels
who surrounded God was guarding the long knife. Kristian Anugu considered himself one of the most cunning warriors on the island, but that didn’t make him foolish enough to mess with the
ensels
. He’d been watching from the bush when the
yelopela
soldiers came with their long guns with knives on the front. Once, beneath a full moon, he’d seen two
yelopelas
holding a man from another tribe while a third plunged the gun-knife into his body. He had no wish to be discovered by them and treated in a similar fashion.

Unlike other islanders who made alliance with one or the other, Kristian saw no difference between the
yelopelas
and the white soldiers who always stared at the sky through the
glas bilong kaptens
he coveted. They were outsiders and nothing to do with him, or his clan. If they trespassed on his lands on big mountain he would kill them if he believed they were weak, or avoid them if they were too strong. Sometimes the
yelopelas
would destroy crops or burn houses, but that didn’t change his attitude to them. More food might always be found and it was simple enough to build another house. Kristian’s attention had been drawn to the treasure by the chief
yelopela
who had quartered the crash site like a dog marking out his territory. He’d seen him worship the body of the
yelopela
king before going to the
kes
and spending much time furtively studying the contents. At first, Kristian had feared the man would remove the treasure. His heart had thundered like the waves on Loloho beach as he’d watched the soldier’s indecision before leaving the precious
kes
where it lay. When he’d been certain the men were gone he recovered the
kes
and set out for the longhouse on big mountain.

That was when he made the mistake. His way had taken him past the road where God sometimes rained fire on the
yelopelas
, who appeared to have incurred His wrath more than the white soldiers they hunted. He believed this must be the case because the whites were left untouched. Or perhaps they were too few and insignificant? Normally a man might cross the road with ease, because there were not enough
yelopelas
to guard it properly. Today he’d been delayed by the same soldiers who had surrounded the crashed machine.

After some thought he took a different route, using the bed of a stream a little to the north. By the time he reached big mountain he could hear the
yelopelas
and their Black Dogs, the native Bougainvilleans who supported them, not far behind. He was not overly concerned, he could outwit the
yelopelas
easily enough, but the Black Dogs were a different matter. They might be salt-water people from the coastal settlements, but even their limited skill would allow them to track him back to the longhouse. He must not let that happen. Maintaining his pace to stay just far enough ahead, he considered his position. If he abandoned the
yelopela
treasure it was possible he could talk his way past them, though it would cost him some pride. Normally, they did not kill without reason, however insignificant that reason might be. But he sensed that the crash of the flying machine and the death of their king would make the
yelopela
soldiers more murderous than usual, and, in any case, the treasure fascinated him. He would continue, he decided, and lure them away from the longhouse until he decided what to do.

The patch of thick jungle was like a hundred others and he had no idea why it attracted him. He burrowed deep in its centre with the treasure under his arm and the sounds of the hunters closing in. Once he was settled, Kristian closed his eyes and sought to make himself as insignificant as possible. When the sonorous voice began to echo inside his head it seemed entirely natural and proper.

Not far away, he could hear the
yelopelas
blundering through the brush, crushing twigs and leaves underfoot and making more noise than the wild pigs he often hunted. Sometimes he could smell them – the
yelopelas
– before he could see them. They perspired freely in the sultry jungle conditions and the scent of their bodies was acrid in his nostrils, along with the rice-cooking odour they carried with them. But the sounds in closest proximity were much stealthier: the soft, wary treads of a barefoot hunter. The Black Dogs were almost upon him.

You must trust in me
, the voice of his long-dead grandfather advised.
I will be the cloak that shields you from the
yelopelas
and their Hat Men. Hold the treasure of their king to your chest and sing me the song of the fire dance that was never sung and without which I will never be at peace
.

At first, Kristian found the advice perplexing. Logic told him his grandfather was long dead and to make a noise would be fatal. The old man had been killed in a blood feud that had only ended, according to family tradition, when the
jemeni polis
hanged three members of each clan from the same tree. Kristian’s mother, the queen, had always preached respect for their ancestors, but it was the mention of Hat Men that convinced him to comply with the old man’s wishes. The Hat Men had been the Black Dogs of the
jemeni polis
in the days before
yelopelas
and Big War, but they had not been generally spoken of since long before Kristian was born.